Comments

Comment by Khereth

Comment by malcontentus

according to http://thottbot.com/s2565 it has no global cool down. If anyone can verify this then please make a new comment and rate this down.

Comment by KeeZ

Shield block has no global cooldown, confirmed

Comment by Archangel

An excellent tanking ability, obviously. I would advise even Arms or Fury warriors to invest at least 12 points into Protection for Last Stand and Improved Shield Block, which extends it's duration by 1 second and gives an extra block. With 12 points invested into protection, all Warriors can tank pretty well.

Anyhow, whenever this skill is not cooling, it should be up while tanking. It can also be used preemptively in PvP; if you see a hunter casting Aimed Shot, stance-dance to Defensive, wait till it almost fires and hit Shield Block to absorb a goodly amount of damage! This can also be used in conjunction with Revenge(especially Improved Revenge) for a good cheap source of damage/threat.

Comment by biggamer155

this move appears to be unafected by the focused rage talent i respecced yesterday and it stayed at a 10 rage cost instead of reducing to 7 rage

Comment by xMonomonoi

That's because the Focused Rage talent applies to offensive abilities. Shield Block is a defensive ability.

Comment by MeanMachine

In WotLK this ability will recieve a major nerf -> 100% chance to block and 100% increased block value, but ONLY for one attack (one attack that you block, you could still dodge and parry as they take higher priority than block no mater how much you increase the chance). The cooldown gets increased to 30 seconds (you can take away 10 with Improved Shield Block).

No more free avoidance for warriors, and if they remove crushing blows, you won't really need it that much. Anyway, Shield Block becomes more of a panic button now, ensuring that you would at least block .. a lot of damage.

Comment by Gruneun

Shield Block becomes more of a panic button now

No doubt, it's an enormous nerf, but it's hardly a panic button. Even with the cooldown decreased by talents, spending just ten rage every twenty seconds will make it a spammable action that gives the healers a buffer.

However, I can foresee bosses that hit the tank extremely hard at a specific time, requiring the block to be available and its use well-timed.

Comment by Bostung

The change is a fairly substantial nerf to the mitigation aspect of Shield Block, but, combined with Shield Slam, it may be useful for threat generation.

If it functions like other block value modifying talents and abilities, (and comparing spell effects, I suspect it does) the doubling of block value will increase Shield Slam's damage as long as you Shield Slam before the charge is lost. Since Shield Block is not on the GCD, you should be able to create a macro to activate Shield Block and use Shield Slam at the same time.

I'm not in the beta, though, so I can't test this out.

Edit: Thanks to Snags (and some random people on the beta forums) for confirming that this does, in fact, increase Shield Slam damage.

Comment by Acidpants220

It's not that much of a nerf, considering they're removing Crushing blows.

Comment by Pyroshen

Everyone needs to read this again.

It's not that much of a nerf, considering they're removing Crushing blows.

Shield block pre-Wotlk was used mostly to keep you at 102% avoidance and avoid crushing blows. But now crushing blows will only happen when the mob is 4 levels above you (meaning at max level nothing will crush you, not even bosses). This means that shield block will just be used to reduce some of the damage taken.

Reducing some (block)< Reducing all (dodge/parry)

Some of you are using old knowledge to argue new laws.

ALSO, to reply to bostung:

I think that with a good macro this would work in increasing the damage of one shield slam.

Since shield block is instant and doesn't trigger the GCD (IIRC) something can be used instantly after it if macro'd (just like inner focus or trinkets).

Comment by Drunkard

Beta: 2 Str = 1BV (Confirmed)Live: 20 Str = 1 BV

Blocks will be blocking a lot more in WotLK and from the looks of the crafted tanking gear (eg. Tempered Saronite Breastplate) strength is going to be an abundant stat on alot of tanking pieces.

Comment by snags

Bostung, I came across this recently. Not sure how reliable the source is but it's something I guess :)

Can anyone confirm/deny whether or not Shield Block and Critical Block are capable of affecting Shield Slam damage? And if so, are they capable of stacking for a 4x Shield Slam? What I wouldn't do for a beta key...

Comment by Bostung

In pre-WotLK Shield Block had a dual purpose. First, it removed crushing blows from the attack table, and second it reduced the damage taken from virtually every attack by your shield block value. Now it does neither.

You can try to tell me we haven't lost much here, but that's going to be a hard sell.

Comment by Pyroshen

ALL tank gear (from the past and in the future) is being reworked to include more strength. Take a look at any of your old favorite peices of tanking loot on the regular wowhead and compare it to the wotlk stuff. Across the board almost all pieces are gaining some strength and losing other stats (like hit, defense, shield value, etc)

It also looks like they're removing the Block Value stat from all pieces of gear that aren't shields, so I don't think that block value numbers are going to be that drastically changed (in relation to what they would be if block value was still in lvl 71+ gear).

Comment by unrulymonkey

What happened to "but will only block 1 attack"? The live tooltip specifies that, but this one doesn't. Does the buff actually last the full 10 seconds now, regardless of how many times you block?

Comment by Gymble

You gain rage from parrying, but not dodging

No, we dont.

Comment by Afakaz

Comment by blackout99

I dno if you shall call this a nerf or a power up now, indeed it gets a long CD, but in mind of that this can be a panic button for tanks is good, since you will block all atacks and your BV is increased it's basically a immune shield to melee normal trash mobs, but that's if you got a high BV

Comment by Nishika

Imagine a boss like Prince Malchezzar, who in phase to hits you with a lot of strikes right after each other. Popping shield block, which then doubles your chance to block AND block double amount of damage - that is pretty nice. Critical Block only makes this even better - and with the change to Devastate which can reset the cooldown on your Shield Slam, I can see a lot of big Shield Slam incoming.

Overall.. nice change.. gonna be fun to try out. :)

Comment by Korasoff

Popping shield block, which then doubles your chance to block AND block double amount of damage

Not quite. The tooltip is misleading, to say the least. :)

Block value: this is indeed increased by 100%, as in, doubled. If you block for 500 usually, then using Shield Block increases your block value to 1000.

Comment by Kamanez

People calls this a nerf. Well i see it more as a buff tbh. With the new mechanisms of thunder clap and shockwave (possible including Glyph of Sunder Amor http://www.wowhead.com/?item=43427) Multimob tanking is something a wariror will do more frequently. If you have a good bunch of guys hitting hard on you i can argue that this a bility is even more effective than the good old Shield Wall http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=871.

Imagine yiou have 6 guys hitting on you for 1,5k each every second. Now. the damage you take of course depends on you avoidance, but lets say you got flat out 20% dodge, 20% parry and 20% block. (500 block value) (you are more likely to have more dodge, more block and less parry, but lets just use nice numbers)

Case one. No ability usedyou have a 40% chance of avoiding each attack, so out of 6 attacks (6*0,6=3,6) 3,6 attacks will land. 20% of the 6 attacks will be mitigated by block (6*0,2=1,2) attacks will be blocked and the remaining (3,6-1,2 =2,4) will land for 1,5k. Now lets take the example of each of the mobs hitting for 1,5k. 1,2*1000 (note: not 1500 due to block value) = 1200 + (2,4 * 1500) = 4800. They hitted every other second so thats 2400 DPS you take. Without pressing shield block.

Case two. Shield wall used:here we can just take the numbers from the last case and multuiply with 0,4 (to take out 60% of the damage inflicted) 2400 dps * 0,4 = 960 DPS taken.

Case three. Shield Block used.You still have 40% avoidance, but now you have 120% block. Block comes after both parry and dodge on the hit table so you have 60% block (and now you also have 1000 block value)

6 attackers inflicting 1,5k damage each every second. 40% of the goes away leaving 3,6 attacks.3,6 attacks is then blocked for 1000 damage so now they all inflict 500 damage each other second. 500*3,6 = 1800 damage every other second which is 900 DPS taken.

According to my math, shield block is more valuable than shield wall when fighting 6 guys hitting for 1,5k each 2 seconds.. I have used round numbers, but i hope you see my point. Shiled wall and shield block is close, and nobody says you cant use them at the same time (maybe even backed up with Last stand) to mitigate alot of damage.

NOTE: bear in mind that i have not included parry-haste mehanism into this, this can very likely change the output. At least i see shield block as a "mini shield wall" but also as a nice boost to my TPS every 40 seconds.

EDIT: fixed a error, thanks to Korasoff for pointing it out.

/cheers.

Comment by Korasoff

you have a 40% chance of avoiding each attack, so out of 6 attacks (6*0,6=3,6) 3,6 attacks will land. 20% of them will be mitigated by block (3,6*0,8=2,88) attacks will land while the remaining 0,72 will be blocked. Now lets take the example of each of the mobs hitting for 1,5k. 0,72*1000 (note: not 1500 due to block value) = 720 + (2,88 * 1500) = 5040. They hitted every other second so thats 2520 DPS you take. Without pressing shield block.

This is incorrect. Because of the way the combat table works, you'll block 20% of 6 attacks, or 1.2 attacks. So 2.4 attacks will land, not 2.88.

Comment by Korasoff

Shield Block and You: A Comparative Analysis

Before patch 3.0, Shield Block increased your chance to block by a flat 75% for 6 seconds, but only had 1 charge, meaning it would block only one attack and then fade. It also cost 10 Rage and had a 6-second cooldown. With the talent Improved Shield Block the cooldown could be reduced to 5 seconds and an additional charge added.

In that incarnation Warriors used Shield Block to boost their total avoidance over 102.4%, at which point boss crushing blows were pushed off the combat table, which greatly increased a Warrior's survivability. If you weren't mashing Shield Block every time the cooldown was up you were doing it wrong! However, the charges made it next to useless against more than one mob at once... not that any guild worth its salt let a Warrior do the AoE tanking over a Paladin back then.

Post-3.0, Shield Block now increases your chance to block by a flat 100% for 10 seconds, doubles your block value for the duration, and lasts its full duration no matter how many times you block since the charges were removed along with the Rage cost. On the downside, the cooldown was increased to 60 seconds. The talent Shield Mastery can now reduce the cooldown to 40 seconds.

The new Shield Block is a vastly different skill from its pre-3.0 form. For one, only mobs four levels higher than you or above can land crushing blows now, meaning boss-level mobs cannot crush anymore. No need to spam Shield Block! But the ability has also acquired a myriad of offensive and defensive uses.

1) Increase your Shield Slam's damage. Since Shield Slam damage is partially based on your block value, doubling it will noticably increase the damage. Popping Shield Block as you Charge a boss and delivering a huge Shield Slam crit to its face locks down aggro like nothing else. Same concept in PvP, except replace "boss" by "squishy cloth wearer". :)

2) Increase your Damage Shield's damage. Same deal as Shield Slam, except Damage Shield shines a lot more when AoE tanking than when tanking a single target. (See #4.)

3) Rage generation. With 5/5 Shield Specialization you gain 2 Rage every time you block an attack. If you find yourself in a low-Rage situation Shield Block may help you get that little extra Rage you need to out-threat your DPSers. The more mobs hitting you, the more Rage you'll receive.

4) AoE tanking. A combination of points #2 and #3. Charge a group of mobs, pop Shield Block, and Thunder Clap. Voilà! The mobs are glued to you thanks to Damage Shield and you have more than enough Rage to Cleave, Thunder Clap, and Shockwave to keep them bashing you instead of the Mage.

5) Emergency "oh shoot" button. If your HPs take a sudden dip popping Shield Block can give your healer the breathing room he/she needs to save your armored butt. The 100% increase to your chance to block means that, for 10 seconds, all physical attacks made against you will be Misses, Dodges, Parries, or Blocks. Only in the last case will you take any damage, and it will be greatly reduced if your block value is high (which it should be). Also, given equal DPS, the faster a mob hits you, the greater Shield Block's effect will be.

6) On-demand Enrage / Revenge. The talent Improved Defensive Stance procs Enrage, and as mentioned in #5, Shield Block turns all attacks into Misses, Dodges, Parries, or Blocks -- the last three of which will Enrage you, increasing all your damage (and thus your threat!). Similarly, you can only Revenge after a Block, Dodge, or Parry. Using Shield Block at the start of a fight means this high-threat attack will be available as soon as it cools down.

Comment by Cirdin

Macro the use of the Trinket with Shield Block and you have a great formula for 10 seconds of great healing on yourself!

Comment by Kaaosa

I've made the following macro for my warrior since the 3.0 change to Shield Block

#showtooltip Shield Slam/cast Shield Block/cast Shield Slam

This attempts to use Shield Block everytime I use Shield Slam to ensure I use it as soon as its cooldown is up and get good uptime from it, and Shield Block comes first in the macro so that the Shield Slam benefits from the increased SBV.

Comment by ir0npanda

This is melee immunity for ten seconds in PvP. With my prot gear in TBC (which was not built for high SBV) I could block 1400 pre-armor damage. Now that block value will go way up, and with the +100% SBV from this buff, that means I could block at least 3000 pre armor damage with that gear at level 70.

Keep em in front of you, and no damage will get through from any physical dps class barring some overflow from aimed shot (maybe) for ten seconds.

Then shield wall.

Then retaliate (+damage shield!)

No more double rogue teams CCing the druid while they gank you.

Comment by Korasoff

I would not use that macro in boss fights. There are certain fights where Shield Block can counter soft enrages or other abilities (think Decimate on Gluth, for example).

Comment by DrPancake

Comment by makron

This is immunity to Gouge.

Comment by 127599

More accurately it is not on the Global Cooldown and does not trigger it.

Comment by fieryshadowcard

The current state of Patch 3.2 on the PTR has decided that Shield Slam will no longer be affected by Shield Block, but will receive double the threat during Shield Block's duration. At first glance, this looks like a depressing thing (we keep the threat but not the bonus to dps), but then you calm down and realize that with all the other changes going on to block value it's somewhat necessary.

With the block value from items doubling (not including strength or the basic block found on shields), we see a substantial increase to the pool of SBV we already have. Not twice as much, but I'd be so bold as to say maybe somewhere around 30-60% more depending on what your gear is centered around. Furthermore, On-Use bonus SBV trinkets last for twice as long. All these things greatly pump up Shield Slam's damage without factoring in Shield Block so that it's stronger without having to rely on that buff for much, much longer than 12 seconds at a time. With all these things considered, Shield Slam's general threat becomes much higher, our dps is more consistent if not stronger than it was before, and our tps gets a huge boost. This means that in the end, what we are seeing is a rather large threat increase a more consistent dps and a substantial mitigation increase as opposed to a threat increase/dps decrease.

So, in effect, Shield Block's new role in 3.2 sounds like one step back, four steps forward.

Comment by strajo

You can bandage the tank when he pops this... if the boss doesnt do any unblockable damage, that is :)

Comment by Daiemio

Wonder if you can use this to block instant kill abilities.. like, that last execute, or a overpowering blow, that would no doubt kill a low level?

Comment by Hapseleg

Okay so i've done quite alot of calculations and there is something wrong with the tooltip! Theres something wrong with this spell.. Okay lets see.Increases your chance to block and block value by 100% for 10 sec.

Okay so you 100% block chance more, this works as it shouldIt also says block value by 100%Now we can all agree that 100% of 500 is 1000 right? Cause when i look at my numbers i NEVER get 100% more BV

I removed all my gear (except for shield) and did some tests (did some with gear aswell)

Comment by Vurka

Comment by Junyed

Comment by kemikalkadet

As of 4.0.1 this ability no longer doubles your block value due to the removal of block as a stat on gear.

Comment by korvhuve

Shield Block, against regular melee mobs, is more or less a 10 second 30% reduction to damage taken on a 30 second cooldown, assuming it's talented. Critical blocks improves the mitigation further.

Comment by Fatcatlol

Yay! Nerfed shield block. :(

Comment by mmaniac

As of the last patch Shield Block increases your block chance by just 25%, butif your total avoidance exceeds 100%, the excess goes for your critical block.So basically, if you have say:20% dodge, 30% parry, 40% block and 25% crit block,using Shield Block makes you with:20% dodge, 30% parry, 65% block and 40% crit blockBut the question is, can you really exceed these 100%?Not with the current gear, I presume... Unless you use a trinket

Comment by mmaniac

Does miss chance count as well?I mean, when the boss misses, you are practically not avoiding the attack, but simply the boss fails to hit you.I don't think it has anything to do with avoidance...

Comment by G00dG4m3

I don't know, feel free to downrate me, but does attacker's chance to miss an attack on you counts as, well... YOUR avoidance?

Comment by G00dG4m3

I meant specificaly this mechanic, which says "if your total chance to block or avoid an attack exceeds 100%, your chance to critically block is increased by the excess.", and now you see, what did I mean.

Comment by petre

Huh, I don't see it listed anywhere, and I don't know if it's possible yet even if you stack Mastery everywhere in full T12 heroic gear, but if your passive (without Shield Block active) block+avoidance exceeds 100% would the excess be converted to critical block, or is that mechanic only available for the 10 seconds Shield Block is up? The spell details and tooltip would appear to indicate you would get no benefit to critical block unless Shield Block is active, but they don't rule out the implementation of a separate mechanic that does this.

Comment by CucumberGH

I found that I was forgetting to activate my Fire of the Deep. Rather than abandon the on use completely, I macroed it with Shield Block, which I use whenever it's available:

#showtooltip/use Shield Block/use Fire of the Deep

The cooldowns don't match (30s for Shield Block with Bastion of Defense, 1m30s for Fire of the Deep), but that's not a big deal. The end result is that one in three applications of Shield Block is on steroids and also gives me an extra 13% dodge before diminishing returns. I know it would be better to activate them separately and distribute my damage reduction, but I had trouble integrating the Fire into my cooldown rotation. This way I benefit from its effect and can forget that I even have it.

Comment by Shrikesnest

As of Mists, this became less of a no-brainer (thanks to the addition of ) but remains a compelling choice in many situations. Not only does this flat-out reduce any physical damage you would take for 6 seconds by 30%, but it gives every one of those attacks a chance to be critically blocked for a whopping 60% mitigation.

When this is best used is a tricky question, because Shield Barrier is so powerful and much more generally applicable, and using both at the same time is usually redundant. In general, though, if you're taking a lot of physical hits in a short period of time, this is a good cooldown to use, so the beginning of a pull with lots of trash or a phase of any boss fight where they make a lot of physical attacks in rapid succession make good candidates. It really depends on how much absorption you can put out with Shield Barrier, though. Blocking all the damage is better than negating some of it, no matter how you slice it.

Comment by KobraPL

It seems that the Shield Block cannot have 100% uptime, here's why.Every charge lasts 6s and has 9s CD. You can use this skill up to 4 times in a row, without reaching cooldown. After that every 6s, you have to wait 3s for the charge to be refreshed.

Comment by Mali267

I am wondering if this ability block all physical damages or all auto-attack damages.

Another way to ask this: Do all physical damages blockable? Auto-attacks can be blocked, but what about boss mechanics like gruul's inferno strikeInferno Strike or oregorger's acid torrentAcid Torrent. They are physical but can we mitigate their damge by shield block?

Comment by rodalpho

The devs told us exactly how Prot Warrior abilities work in PvP at the link(s) below.

Comment by ginny

In Legion, the term “Active Mitigation” refers to a single, specific ability that a Tank must use as a “counter” to specific boss abilities.

These boss abilities are designated as “Mitigation Checks”. If you fail to use Active Mitigation against a Mitigation Check, you receive an additional negative side effect, e.g. being flung away by a boss (Dargrul of Neltharion's Lair) or the boss gaining a shield (Tirathon Saltheril in Vault of Wardens).

Here is a list of the Active Mitigation abilities for each Tank Specialization in Legion:

Note. Marrowrend grants Active Mitigation via a short Recently Used Death Strike buff. Bone Shield itself provides no Active Mitigation. Also, unlike all other Tank Specializations' Active Mitigation, Blood Death Knight's abilities are on the global cooldown table ("on the GCD") therefore cannot be used at any time.

Comment by mintea

The new shield block spell ID is 132404 with the T19 2-set bonus. For simple WAs, enter this in the trigger and enable Full Scan.